Drina life mapped

October 31, 2012

I found this old map of the Drina River region online and couldn’t resist personalizing it. It’s a 1930s map from the time of the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes, when this area was part of the “Drina Duchy” (Drinska Banovina). I love seeing the Drina run down the middle of the map and imagining how people would have floated down it in barges or crossed over on rare stone bridges. I marked Bratunac (where I live) in red, Srebrenica (where I work) in purple, and Brcko in green. Visegrad (yellow) is home to an famous Ottoman era bridge and was important for that reason (see how it’s underlined in the map). Interestingly, Bratunac is not noted on the map, although Ljubovija, across the river, today is much much smaller and yet is featured on the map. Things must have been quite different in the 30s…

In 30 we did not have BiH or Croatia or Serbia. We had Karadjordjevic Parliamentary Monarchy and one state Yugoslavia, Monarchy was split in regions called “Banovina”.
Map above as you can see shows Drinska banovina, partly in Bosnia and partly in Serbia.